January attitude adjustment

A three year old girl is learning the names of different boats. She names the sailboat, tugboat, tanker, canoe, and the "summertime spring". Yes, we all live in a yellow summertime spring! We just thought we were the fish on the January hook of an ice fisherman in Quebec, but our chilly attitude needs adjustment.

I don't know if my student is channeling the Beatles or Raffi, but her wonderful mangled "submarine" propelled me through a ridiculously cold day in North Texas. If you feel submerged in Arctic waters, try singing

[So we sailed on to the sun,
Till we found the sea green,
And we lived beneath the waves,
In our yellow submarine,...]

We all live in a summertime spring
a summertime spring
a summertime spring...


© 2009 Nancy L. Ruder

Bye Baby Bunting

Ohio is the land of porch patriotic bunting, although that is not its slogan on car license plates. Red, white, and blue decorations must be recommended, if not actually required, in every sort of Ohio community.

This particular bunted abode is the former home of William Holmes McGuffey. The writer of the McGuffey Readers series lived in this house from 1826 to 1836:

It was during his years at Miami when McGuffey was approached to write a series of readers for school children. In addition to the work done on these by William Holmes McGuffey, he was assisted by his brother, Alexander Hamilton McGuffey, who also compiled a speller and had sole responsibility for the Fifth Reader. Alexander taught school while working on his law degree and opened a law office in Cincinnati in 1839. The McGuffey Readers sold over 125,000,000 copies.


Why do folks in the Buckeye State bunt so profusely? This was something to consider during the Reds vs. Cubs game which had a few instances of bunting.

bunt
1825, "to strike with the head or horns," perhaps an alteration of butt (as a goat), or from M.E. bounten "to return." Baseball term is from 1889. [from the Online Etymology Dictionary]

My old American Heritage dictionary shows bunt as a variant of butt with horns or head. In baseball, it is to bat a pitched ball with a half swing, and with the upper hand supporting the middle of the bat, so that the ball rolls slowly in front of the infielders. Bunt also has a nautical usage, being the middle section of a square sail or the sagging middle part of a fishnet. And then there's the agricultural bunt disease of wheat, rye, and other cereal grasses caused by fungi of the genus Tilletia and resulting in sooty black spores in place of normal seeds. Ick.

What does "bunting" mean?

bunting (1)
"flag material," 1742, perhaps from M.E. bonting gerundive of bonten "to sift," because cloth was used for sifting grain, via O.Fr. from V.L. *bonitare "to make good." [from the Online Etymology Dictionary]

A light cotton or woolen cloth used for making flags. Flags collectively. Long, colored strips of cloth used for festive decoration. [Origin unknown]

bunting (2)
"type of lark-like bird," c.1300, bountyng, maybe from buntin "plump" (cf. baby bunting, also Scots buntin "short and thick;" Welsh bontin "rump," and bontinog "big-assed"), or a double dim. of Fr. bon. [from the Online Etymology Dictionary]

Any of various birds of the family Fringillidae, having short, cone-shaped bills.

A snug-fitting, hooded sleeping bag for infants. [From "Bye, Baby Bunting," a nursery rhyme, origin and meaning unknown.]

Then there's the matter of the buntline. It's a rope that keeps a square sail from bellying when it is being hauled up for furling. Edward Zane Carroll Judson chose the pseudonym Ned Buntline for his sensational newswriting and dime novels about Buffalo Bill Cody.

Where does Ohio fit in this, with its bounty of pleated fan bunting and flag-festooned porches?

I'm only guessing that it dates way back to the "front-porch" presidential campaigns of Ohioans James A. Garfield in 1880 and William McKinley in 1896.

This little side note for folks like me from the hometown of William Jennings Bryan:

"McKinley's opposing candidate, William Jennings Bryan, gave over 600 speeches and traveled many miles all over the United States to campaign, but McKinley outdid this by spending about twice as much money campaigning. While McKinley was at his Canton, Ohio, home conducting his "front-porch campaign", Mark Hanna was out raising millions to help with the campaign." [from Wikipedia]

© 2009 Nancy L. Ruder

Light Fuse Get Away Fast

"When you were a child, you always said the Fourth of July was your favorite holiday," Dad remembered. Those childhood Fourths were filled with family traditions, friendly gatherings, anticipation, and sensory delights.

First thing in the morning we marched our American flag out to the front yard to display it for the day, then we launched our parachutes before breakfast.

We would have purchased our firecrackers days before, each with a crisp five dollar bill. The best prices were usually found inside the Walgreens store at Gateway Mall. Buying our own fireworks was a big incentive for learning to do arithmetic in our heads so we could literally get the most bang for our bucks. We had to decide whether to buy the large economy package of bottle rockets, or just buy a dozen at a higher price each in order to have more money to spend on fountains, helicopters, and grasshoppers. We did math to determine how many packs of Black Cats we needed to get through the day with no leftovers, but not run short. Although our neighbors insisted that children must have the very long metal sparklers, we decided we prefered the little Chinese paper sparklers that changed colors better, and didn't spend our money based on peer pressure!

A trip to the swimming pool took up the middle part of the day, and in later years, sailing at Holmes Lake. Sometimes a relaxing nap was required, and other years just suggested. Then it was time for the three family get-together, with eight kids of stair-stepping ages, and six parents. A different family hosted the event each year, so we got practice being good hosts and polite guests. Big kids were expected to include the little ones in our activities so no one felt left out. We kids would make crayon drawings on red, white, and blue construction paper for placemats, and use our best handwriting on placecards. We had to budget our annual package of assorted colored paper to have enough red for Valentines, the Fourth, and Christmas!

After perfectly broiled Nebraska corn-fed T-bones there would be hide-and-seek until it got dark. Each family had a designated launching pad in the yard, and safety was the rule. While dads launched the more dangerous firecrackers, children were taught to light their five-dollars' worth carefully and one person at a time. The result was as much a proud moment celebrating our developing skill as it was a pyrotechnic display! By evening we would have carefully analyzed our purchases to choreograph how to build the excitement toward a grand finale, alternate sound and light impressions, gold and colored, ground and sky.

The smoke kept away the mosquitos. At the end of our family display we could climb a hill or get up on the roof to watch big displays out at the country clubs. Disappointment and let down that the Fourth was over for another year was balanced by personal satisfaction, and physical exhaustion after a day spent outside. We shared slices of chilled watermelon, spitting pits for distance and accuracy, while the moms collected their dishes and coolers.

The Fourth of July was more problematic when two of my sons had asthma, and fireworks became illegal except for large civic displays. Not all parents supervised children to ensure a safe, happy Fourth the way the three dads had in my childhood. An attitude that city regulations were intended to be broken as far as possible unless the police arrived ran counter to what I tried to teach my children the rest of the year.

This year I spent the Fourth of July with my dad. I watched rabbits playing chase and leapfrog amid the fireflies, and later in the evening being backlit by fireworks and hazy smoke. I wondered if Van Gogh's "Starry Night" might actually be a bunny silouette against firefly and firework light.

When I returned to class after the holiday, I told the older students about the bunnies and fireflies. We had studied "Starry Night" together, and offered our personal interpretations year before last. And so, I was very touched yesterday when a dear student gave me a thank you note written in her beautiful cursive and illustrated with the bunny rabbits' Fourth of July.

Since moving to Plano in 1990, I've looked forward to the first appearance of the ruby-throated hummingbirds in my yard. The date is always uncertain, but the sensory delight is guaranteed. So nice that it occurred on my oldest son's twenty-fifth birthday today!



© 2007 Nancy L. Ruder

Progress reports

Now that my soccer mom career has ended, I am discovering how many parts of my life were organized around that identity. I have a very difficult time writing semester progress reports for my art students at home due to all the piles and stacks and stuff angling for my attention. That's why I wrote progress reports sitting in my official soccer mom sling chair during team practices and game warm-ups for so many years.

My youngest is away at college, but some Sundays he joins a pick-up soccer game on the field outside the dorms. Some Sundays I sit on sidelines here just to get my work done. It is nice to visit with my ref friends at the half, but mostly I do my reading or writing in a little post-soccer-mom bubble of familiar sounds, sun, and breezes. No art teacher is an island, but maybe I'm a big mama sandbar in a flat river, just letting the sun soak in, the activity blur, and the distractions melt away.

No games today, so I sat my sandbar bottom down at the Dallas Arboretum to write the progress reports and watch the sailboats racing on White Rock Lake. The numerous brides at the Arboretum were billowing photogenically, too, near every fountain, arch, and pool in the gardens. I would not have been surprised if a bride had suddenly ordered, "Prepare to come about. Ready about. Hard alee!"

Holmes Lake Regatta

Put on your life jacket and sunscreen! This blog is going sailing in Lincoln, the capitol of Nebraska. True, Nebraska is landlocked, but memory is not. Memory has to bail sometimes, and may even have to stand on the daggerboard to right the boat when it turns turtle*, but it is free to sail all the way to the edge of this Administration's flat Earth and beyond.





Put on your oldest Keds. They may still squau-ucksh and squirrish from your last day sailing. No need to shower and shampoo before this outing.



My sailing experience is limited to a few golden summers and autumns on Holmes Lake, a Corp of Engineers project completed in 1962, in Sunfish, Dolphin, and Dolphin Junior boats in the years just before I learned to drive. We had fabulous fun learning the sailor lingo of "hard alee", "prepare to jibe", "come about", "high-siding", "tacking", and "running before the wind". Sometimes even the "doldrums" can be exciting.



Captain Small's little dog, Tinker, is more active than Blue Dog. My sons loved Lois Lenski's Big Book of Mr. Small, and my students love each story.

The lake has been dredged and restored in the last two years, and reopened this month. I hope a new generation of kids with slip on their squauuuuckshy tennis shoes and go sailing.

*turn turtle To capsize or turn upside-down: Our sailboat turned turtle during the squall.




My students are looking at images by Van Gogh, Turner, Homer, Whistler, Seurat, and others this week. We're using curves and overlapped triangles to create space and movement. We're off to sail the Seven Landlocked Seas!